News for Seattle

There’s some big news coming out of Sub Pop HQ here in sunny Seattle, WA: we have joined forces with the other-worldly and truly stunning, Rose Windows, a septet also hailing from Seattle. We’re releasing their debut record, The Sun Dogs on June 25th. Listen to the first single from their forthcoming debut, “Native Dreams”, in the widget above.

Here at Sub Pop Records in Seattle, WA sometimes we like to look at magazines about music. One of those magazines about music is SPIN. And, we’re pretty sure that we know the guy on the cover of the May 2011 issue of SPIN. Consider the evidence…

— For starters, there is, on the cover of the May 2011 issue of SPIN, a big picture of a guy who looks STRIKINGLY like Robin Pecknold from the band Fleet Foxes (whose kind of amazing 2nd record, Helplessness Blues, we are putting out on May 3rd). The resemblance is uncanny.

— And then! There’s the following clue made of words, also on the cover of this May 2011 issue of SPIN: “Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and the making of the year’s most beautiful album.”

It’s got to be him, right? Just this side of reading the cover story within the actual magazine, we’re fairly confident it is.

When you are a world-famous record label like we are, you get used to seeing the artists you work with on the cover of magazines like SPIN all the time. So, it’s not as though this is a big deal to us or anything. At all. But, you guys might be impressed.

Niki & the Dove are making their live US debut here in Seattle this Wednesday, April 6th at The Crocodile. Not only that but the whole of the $5 cover charge is going directly to the Red Cross. Good music and a good cause! If you’re with us here in Seattle, come on down. Doors are at 8pm.

Sub Pop’s recent signing of Seattle’s ascendant hip-hop collaborative Shabazz Palaces highlights an exciting, new example of the city’s legendary and ever-evolving music community. After self-releasing 2 EPs, Of Light and Shabazz Palaces, in 2009, the group quickly gained local acclaim, especially (and most noticeably to us) here within the Sub Pop offices. The Stranger, on Shabazz Palaces:

Shabazz’s almost subliminal messages are universal: ‘Find out who you are and see it/Find out what you are and free it/Find out who you love and need it/Find out what you can and be it.’ It’s a timely sentiment for Seattle hip-hop, which, after years of self-negating/hating or looking too much to the Bay Area and Brooklyn for direction, is enjoying a creative surge and homegrown industry that is—no bullshit—changing the landscape of Seattle music.

“I think we both have a lot of love, appreciation, respect and energy for music and for each other. Recognizing the fact that business is necessary for maximizing exposure to it, I think we mutually feel that doing business is less a ‘job’ and more an opportunity to exercise those feelings in dope ass ways. Shabazz, we bring a distinct hip-hop mentality from left to Sub Pop, which has established itself wide and deep in r&r from that same field. So, it’s going to be cool to see what gets born from rolling together. And, of course, Seattle is the immeasurable muse, the backdrop, backbone, the foundation to how we all get down. So SP feels a lot of pride around this partnering-up as well. The people, the office, the deal, it all feels super plush. So stay tuned, it’s ’bouts to be on.”—the palaceer, Shabazz Palaces

“It’s in the initials. We SPs need to stick together—and we do. Seattle is our home and that means a lot to both parties. And we’re not stopping at both parties, our professional collaboration will undoubtedly inspire many more parties, with some choice SP music as the soundtrack. To put it more prosaically—but no less sincerely—we at SP are honored, humbled and psyched to have been given the responsibility of further introducing the world to the music of SP.”—Jonathan Poneman, Sb Pop Records.

More about Shabazz Palaces
Shabazz Palaces are the first music recipients of The Stranger‘s Genius Awards. The Genius Awards are given to outstanding visionaries in Literature, Film, Art, Theater, and for the first time ever, Music in the Seattle area. Shabazz Palaces will performing and accept their award at the Genius Awards Party, on September 17th at Seattle’s Moore Theatre.

Shabazz Palaces will also be performing on October 15th at New York’s American Museum of Natural History as part of “One Step Beyond,” a monthly series featuring live music and dancing at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The series, presented by FADER, has featured performances from Kid Sister w/ Kanye West, Passion Pit, Moby, Animal Collective and more. Details available here.

Our beloved and preternaturally talented art director Jeff Kleinsmith and his equally highly-regarded and gifted partner (and a former art director here at Sub Pop) Jesse LeDoux are putting on an 11-year retrospective poster show which opens this Thursday in Seattle. Together, Jeff and Jesse make up Patent Pending Industries and this 11/100 show will assuredly be great. See you there!

Jeff Kleinsmith and Jesse LeDoux decided to start making screen-printed rock posters together 11 years ago while working together in the art department at Sub Pop Records. They named their endeavor Patent Pending and used it as a creative outlet and experimental conduit.

As world events have shown, a lot has happened in the past 11 years. The quick version is: They made some posters. Some magazines wrote some articles about them. They opened a screen-printing shop. They did a couple more posters. They attended some Flatstock poster festivals. They taught some classes on poster design. Jesse moved to Rhode Island and opened up Patent Pending East. Jeff started doing some movie posters. Jesse moved the Patent Pending East office to Japan (Patent Pending FAR East?). They did some more posters. They closed the screen-printing shop. Got a couple more Flatstocks under their belt. Broke out of their white paper rut and did a poster on stainless steel (but still did a version on white paper). Jesse moved back to Seattle. They did a few more posters. The long version includes running from creditors due to fraudulent pizza and porn transactions on the company card, trying to hide a 1000-lb paper cutter, run-ins with meth-heads, and a couple major motion picture cameos.

WHICHBRINGS US TO NOW (or this Thursday, to be exact), when Patent Pending will have a retrospective poster show at the Design Commission Gallery in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Digging deep into the archives, this will be the first time their 11-year body of influential poster work will be seen in its (near) entirety.

We hope that it comes as no (or even relatively little) surprise that we here at Sub Pop Records are great fans of a few things that are not actually on or directly related to Sub Pop Records. And one of these things that we are great fans of is the Suicide Squeeze record label. The label is both our neighbor and friend and is right now in the midst of an unbelievable Decade Crushing Sale. Read all about it below, but mostly, you should get over there and get you some.

From Suicide Squeeze Records:

After all the party-ending, porch-collapsing celebration, 2009 is history. Dead and gone, and good riddance… Fuck 2009: the hardest year of our past 14 years. What can I say? The raw truth is that if it weren’t for our bands (their fans, and ours) we’d be dead and gone too. Yeah, the collapse of Touch and Go Records—our exclusive national distributor—hit pretty close to home.

As one year of transition and hope becomes another year, stretching into an unknown, yet blindingly exciting future… All you can do is take the deepest of breaths, and hold tight to the things you love the most…

Help us maintain what we love: our family of bands, and the beautifully diverse music they create. And help yourselves, too, to some of this past decade’s great albums and singles… Everything from our most recent release (Russian Circles “Geneva”) to the earliest 7-inches by Modest Mouse and Elliott Smith—massively discounted. Sound to discover, sound to share.